Announcing "Fundamental Change" by Roger Schwarz and Associates

Organizations are notoriously resistant to change. But we keep trying. The frustrating thing is that good intentions and hard work have little to do with effecting fundamental change. Without a special set of organizational skills at our command, even our best ideas are likely to be crushed by "business as usual." Sadly, this applies even to social network analysis.

Roger Schwarz has made it his business to tackle this conundrum head-on. His book "The Skilled Facilitator" is a classic resource to help facilitators of all kinds navigate the challenges of guiding organizations to fundamental and sustainable change. For those of you not familiar with it, I recommend Schwarz's work as a complement to Peter Block's "Flawless Consulting." Be forewarned (or encouraged, depending on your taste) that Schwarz takes a formal and systematic approach quite different from Block's friendly writing presence. Another useful benchmark is Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline." A colleague of mine who works with Schwarz has aptly described The Skilled Facilitator as a de-mystified translation of the difficult lingo developed by Senge, Argyris, Schein, and others you will find at SoL.

And now, you can subscribe at no charge to Schwarz's new e-newsletter, Fundamental Change.